A story from my childhood.

I was probably three or four years old, and my mom was babysitting mine and my sister's cousin, Layne. Him and my sister were of an age, both in Kindergarten, while I got to spend long, carefree days at home with my mother, waiting for my sister to get home from school. I will admit, it didn't take a lot to get me to do things, I admired both my sister, Sam, and Layne. You can't expect a lot more from one so young. It was the summer time and the three of us had just finished a swimming lesson at the city pool. We all had easy access to water and our parents thought that we should all learn to swim. Mom had bought us a large cup of ice water to share back and forth across the seat. Layne had pulled the guest straw and got to sit up front with Mom while Sam and I got to sit in back together. Mom had thought it better for us to cool down with it in the car while she ran into the IGA instead of bringing three young kids in with her. Her parting words had been to leave the doors closed at all times.

We had a big, OLD car at the time. There were two doors, heavy steel doors that we thought were very heavy. Mom had been in the store for quite some time and we had finished the cup of water. Some how or another, we managed to get into a squabbling match over the flimsy paper cup and the little plastic lid popped off, upturning the ice right into Layne's lap. We were hot, but he wasn't hot enough to enjoy the cold dousing of ice chips. Without an as-you-like-it, he popped the door out and hopped out onto the hot pavement so that he could brush the ice out. Well this was a big no no, one did not open the door when one was expressly forbidden to do so by the attending adult. We all had the same thought running through our minds, "We are dead when she gets back." That didn't have to be, Layne convinced us, if we just didn't tell her then she would never know that the forbidden had occurred. We told almost anything to my mother, there was nothing we didn't tell her, but some how, Layne convinced us that we had to keep quiet about this. Layne had been on Mom's bad side before and was a little frightened of what she might to, though Sam and myself had none of these fears.

And here she came, bags of groceries in each hand. I remember her popping open the door, flipping forward her seat before she slipped the groceries into my floorboards. I was sitting on my ankles so I didn't need the foot room. We all bit our tongs as Mom settled down in her seat. Sam was keeping a close eye on me, because I was the most likely to tell Mom about the door. The old car slowly backed up and as she left the grocery store parking lot, she took a right and went around the parking lot so that she was heading back towards first street. As we rounded the corner, turning left on the first street, we found out our folly. The door had not been closed tightly enough. Layne was to cocky about his success in pulling the hood over Mom's eyes and was leaning hard on the door as if to tell Sam and myself, "See, she never will know." The added pressure of his body as the corner pushed him into the door was enough. That badly shut door told on us. The door popped open and Layne went tumbling out. Mom says now that it was seer luck that the door had remained closed no longer than it had, because as Layne fell out we weren't even going five miles an hour.

I remember Mom yelling, Sam and me hollering, and Layne crying. He wasn't hurt bad, he had just hit his head a little bit and a big goose egg was raising itself. It was a sight for me to see one of my "untouchable idols" crying more than I ever had. His eyes ran a long time, long enough for us to go the the Country Skillet, then Country Pride, and get some ice for his head. Let me tell you he was sure glad of the ice then.

I spilled the beans to Mom, but her reaction wasn't what we expected. There was no yelling, there was no cruel words. Mom just sat the three of us down and told us that we should have told her because she would have closed the door better and Layne wouldn't have fallen out, she meant that we shouldn't open the doors for strangers, and that no matter how angry we thought she would be with her, we needed to tell her those things because they might be very important. I took that lesson a long way, especially the last part, "No matter how mad you think I am going to be with you, tell me when you have done something, even when I told you not to, because there are far more things that could happen to you if you don't tell me. I would rather be mad at you than see something happen to you because you were scared to tell me." I will never forget that.